Seven of Jimmie Johnson’s 83 glorious Cup Series victories have come at Texas Motor Speedway. Nevertheless, he will be making his first part-time start at his former stomping grounds driving for his race team Legacy Motor Club. Johnson’s second start of the 2024 season sees the 7x Cup champ enter the 1.5-mile oval as a considerable newbie. And years after his full-time retirement as a Hendrick Motorsports driver, Jimmie doesn’t seem all that certain heading to Texas.

Jimmie Johnson’s anxious return to Texas Motor Speedway

The Great American Speedway has been one of Jimmie Johnson’s most dominant tracks in his NASCAR career. Furthermore, he holds many track records at Texas, with his 1,152 laps the highest-ever led by a Cup Series driver. But now making his case at Texas from the back of the pack for Sunday’s race, driving a Toyota for the first time, Jimmie has a newer perspective.

Speaking to the media, Jimmie explained his thoughts when he “rolls through the tunnel” on a vastly different Texas track. He said, “It’s funny now, the way the place drives, just have a lot of anxiety about turns one and two, and the previous configuration, that was really the most fun that you could have on a mile and a half, was turns one and two. So bummed that it’s still not there, but, you know same for everybody, it is what it is.” 

In 2017, TMS underwent a repave, and the symmetrical bankings on Turns 1 and 2 were reconfigured by four degrees while increasing the surface width by 30 feet. Surprisingly, Johnson’s last Texas victory came prior to this repave which took place almost three years before he hung up his racing gloves.

Jimmie went on to reminisce over the former Texas layout, as he said, “But the track in where I’ve had most of my success and the fact that you could run from line to wall, the bumps were in the worst places possible, but that was great, that created mistakes for the drivers and technical challenge for the teams and I thought made it a really really racy racetrack. 

Regardless, the ‘re-configurated’ Texas Motor Speedway is only one of the Hall of Fame inductee’s ‘rookie’ problems at Texas. 

Trading the Bowtie for a Toyota

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In his first year as a part-time driver for LMC’s #84 entry, Jimmie Johnson competed in four races. These advances were significant. First, because this was the first year the Chevrolet faithful drove a Toyota Camry in the Cup Series. Second, this was the first season that the driver with the most consecutive championships in the Cup Series did not break into even the top 20, since his debut at Charlotte in 2001.

He drew some interesting conclusions from his experiences in 2023, saying, “I found last year with the limited races I ran, it is really, really different… I think the first 80% is normal, maybe 90%. But that last little bit and where you run the car — I spent a lifetime running the car off the right rear. And this car, you just cannot do that. From the aero platform, the tire, and, I believe, the side-wall stiffness of the tire. You can‘t slip and slide this car around like I like to do”.

Nevertheless, as Legacy gears up for a solid advance alongside Erik Jones, and John Hunter Nemechek’s #43 and #42 respectively, Jimmie Johnson braces for his own unique challenge at today’s cup race.